Sunday, July 08, 2012

Foreign
Affairs Minister Patiño on the accusations in Sweden against Julian Assange: “Personally, I thinkthis ishilarious”.Professors blog
has said it all along from the beginning: This is a political case, not other.

All
Swedish mainstream media is publishing the above quoted expressions that
Ricardo Patiño Aroca declared to AFP, and referred in Sweden in a cable by TT.

Aftonbladet,
in the sad article “Det är dråpligt”
(5th of July - the title is the translation of “It is hilarious”) tries to counter Patiño’s
assertion by simply throwing some misleading characterizations of Julian Assange – however avoiding to
comment the “condom evidence” or other flawed procedures hinted in the AFP/TT
report. Aftonbladet says for instance that the “crimes-suspect" Julian Assange
“fled” to the Ecuadorian Embassy. The
article refers also the WikiLeaks "duo" Jennifer Robinson and
Kristinn Hrafnsson, giving some impression as if "Bonnie and Clyde" were in a tour.

When describing circumstances or reasons for Assange seeking asylum, the Swedish media acts without any regard to décor or decency: while they almost invariably refer Assange as
“escaping” of “fleeing” to the Ecuador embassy, in the same articles they would
instead often refer the celebre case of Jozsef Mindszenty in
the terms of "Mindszenty asked for asylum” (sökte asyl) or “taken protection” (tagit skydd) at the U.S. embassy in Budapest . . .

On the
other hand, the tabloid was among the very few media referring the
Almedalen conference with the main participation of "spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson and lawyer Jennifer Robinson", and the only one - to the best of my knowledge - announcing their press conference.Following, Aftonbladet asked the “objective” opinion of Claes
Borgström, of the law firm Bodström & Borgström that represent the nominal
accusers of Assange in Sweden.

But to call Bodström & Borgström a "political"
firm would be also accurate:

Claes
Borgström has been during long time official spokesman for gender issues of the
social democratic party and also the government-appointed gender-equality Ombudsman.
Thomas Bordström is a former minister of Justice under the Bush-docile
government of Göran Persson, and that become particularly known after the exposures of collaborating in the secret prisoner-renditions to the CIA. It was about immigrants held in Sweden
and referred by the U.S. of being terrorists, for which Sweden secretly facilitated the transport of the prisoners from Sweden to elsewhere, where they were brutally tortured. WikiLeaks cables have denounced
numerous episodes of marionette collaboration from the part of Sweden’s
Ministry of Justice.

Further,
there is a fact the Swedish press – to the best of my knowledge - has never
mentioned in reference to the Sweden’s by proxy political case against Assange:
Thomas Bodström is a top politician among the social democratic “Brotherhood movement” (Bröderskapsrörelsen),
an internal structure within Sweden’s social democratic party formed by a group
of Christian “fundamentalists”. This
organization was the one inviting Julian Assange for lecturing in Uppsala. In
addition, the political secretary of the said organization “Brotherhood movement” is, according to their Wikipedia article, the same woman that appears as one nominal accuser of Assange --and of
course legally represented by Bodström & Borgström.

Claes
Borgström have acknowledged in a Guardian article [1] being the instigator of
the reopening of the case against Assange after it ha s been dismissed by the
first Chef Prosecutor. Whereas Thomas Bodström – as previously reported in
Professors blog – has taken pride in acknowledging the accountability of
Bordström & Borgström as a whole in representing the plaintiffs against
Assange (said by Bordström’s own words in his blog “Bodström’s
society” as I have referred in Newsmill. [2]

Aftonbladet,
an ideological right-wing tabloid posing from time to time as sympathetic to social-democratic
top politicians, has given in the past ample coverage to Bodström &
Borgström. For instance when Thomas Bodström defended the plaintiff in a case
against political refugee Tito Beltrán (also an international celebrity - a
famous opera tenor) and easily managed to get a conviction from the politically
appointed judges in spite no evidence was presented against Beltrán.
Aftonbladet reported triumphalist on the Court verdict.The verdictstated:

"According to this court, we found the plaintiff's story
credible and that fully meets the requirements to form the basis for a
conviction".

The "evidence" mentioned later in the verdict
against Beltrán referred to declarations of two friends of the plaintiff which
would "have heard" an account from the part of the plaintiff after
the alleged happenings. Also in this case, it was not the plaintiff who have
made a complaint to the police against Beltrán. It was another woman (Monica
Dahlström-Lannes, known in Sweden as activist and campaigner concerning
sexual-offence cases) who after her own private investigations and interviews
on the case filed the complaint to the police - nine years after!

Dahlström-Lannes was a
board-member of the same organization, ECPAC, in which the social
democratic politician and former minister of Justice Thomas Bodström was also a
board-member. However, Bodström denied in the court hearings
that he knew Dahlström-Lannes.

The
above background might explain why Aftonbladet is asking Borgström to provide
Swedsh readers with an “objective” opinion in facing international criticism of
their flawed legal system. This were the arguments, or absence of arguments,
put forward by Borgström in “debating” Minister Patiño’s assertive opinions:

– “I
become very, very much upset. Most of all, on behalf of these two women (the accusers).
It has been very strange comments under the years that passed, but this breaks
all the records. He (Patiño) does not know anything about the facts-on-debate,
he says” [3]

And
Borgström continues,

– “He is a minister in a government, he must think what he
says. I just regret that Ecuador has a foreign minister that is considered as a
clown”

That
said by this Swedish lawyer recently filed upon the Bar Association for alleged
infringement on the ethic codex – for implying in declarations published by
Aftonbladet that Assange was practically a convict.

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